Homemade Tortillas

We grew up down the road from a really neat lady, Martha. Our house was her youngest daughter’s second home. And her house was mine and my sister’s second home.

If we showed up early enough on a Saturday morning, we were greeted with a bowl of chorizo and scrambled eggs and a stack of warm, homemade flour tortillas. And if I was really early enough, I’d be greeted by a flour-dusted kitchen table and Martha in a flour-dusted apron. And then I was handed a rolling pin.

There is no substitute for a homemade flour tortilla. They’re fluffier, more tender, and tastier than what you can get at the store. They make everything taste better. In Houston, you can get fresh flour tortillas in some of the larger, “nicer” grocery stores. If you’re not near one, you can find a carniceria (a Mexican meat market) in many strip centers to get your fix. Or you can just make your own.

The whole process, start to finish, takes less than 30 minutes. You can do completely it by hand or keep those just-painted nails dough-free by using your food processor.

Flour Tortillas

Soft, fluffy homemade tortillas are only 30 minutes away!

Ingredients

3 cups all-purpose flour

2 tsp baking powder

1 heaping tsp salt

5 Tbsp shortening, lard, softened butter, or olive oil

3/4 cup warm water

Instructions

Pulse the flour, baking powder, and salt a few times in your food processor fitted with the dough blade.

Add the fat and process until the mixture is uniformly crumbly.

With the food processor on, slowly stream in the water, just until the dry ingredients form a ball and starts traveling around the bowl (you might not use all of the water or you might need a little more).

Let the dough knead for ~30 seconds. The dough should clean the sides of the bowl, be soft and not overly sticky. (You can most certainly do this by hand with a pastry cutter, a wooden spoon, and your hands.)

I’ve never made my own tortillas before but your recipe definitely makes it look easy and doable. I always love making dinners completely from scratch and I’ll use these for my next Mexican night. Thanks!

Dotty – they’ll keep ~3 days in a ziploc bag on the counter. Since it’s just the two of us, I typically throw the bag in the freezer and just take out what I need. I reheat them in the microwave either in the ziploc bag (if they are the last in the bag) or taken out and wrapped in a damp paper towel.

I eat a lot of store bought tortillas because I thought making them would be quite challenging. Well, it might be still a challenge since I don’t have a food processor but I love the idea that this recipe only uses 5 ingredients and takes only 20 seconds to cook!

Kutzika – I have no experience substituting butter but I did see a couple of mentions on other online recipes that you could substitute butter. If you try it, I’d be interested to know how it turns out!

I’ve seen people substitute coconut oil as well for there. We have a family tortilla recipe and we use vegetable oil instead of butter or lard. I’ve never tried butter but it should be interchangeable with only a slight change in the texture/taste.

These were quite good but it really would have helped if there were instructions on width and thickness. Still, I was very pleased with the results but will make them with canola oil next time so they are healthier. Thanks for the recipe, I really wanted to learn how to make these!

My neighbor grew up in Mexico, when her family came to the United States her mother learned how bad lard was for you. She altered the recipe to substitute 1/3 cup of oil (any kind really) to make the tortillas more heart healthy. Generally she used olive oil, I use vegetable oil because it usually tastes the same and I have run into some bad tasting olive oils.

I couldn’t find tortillas in the stores that were not filled with plastic (hydroginated oil) or wood pulp (cellulose) so I decided to make my own. The last recipe I tried was good but a little hard. I will try this one tonight and see how a different recipe and a batch worth of experience will serve me.

Thanks for sharing the recipe, and I like that it has the nutrition info as part of it! Thanks for doing that.

Since making these tortillas, I have not gone back to store-bought! So easy and delicious, the only part that takes me some time is rolling them out (but even that is minimal.) I omit the baking powder and use hot water. Thanks so much for the delicious recipe!